Windows on ARM64 installer

[BrightRhino]

Hi,

I just got a Lenovo Yoga C630 Windows on Arm laptop with the Qualcom snapdragon 850 processor, I saw that NSIS has support for ARCH64 but it is untested, can I help testing it? What can I do that would be helpful? I have built a couple of open source apps with arm64 support, like notepad2 and notepad++, which I could use to test installation. I haven't ever built an installer with nsis before, but I am willing to try.

Thanks,

Alex

[Anders]

Saying we support ARM is a bit over the top. We have ARM platform detection for x86 installers running on ARM hardware (in the x64.nsh header).

What we don't have is support for is generating and running native ARM installers. I was able to compile most of the files for ARM previously but never tested the generated installers. I can't remember if I save any of these files but I'll check.

Do you have Visual Studio 2019 installed anywhere? (Does not have to be on the ARM machine)

[Anders]

Try this and see what happens, it will probably crash though.

[ljhholer]

Originally Posted by Anders

Try this and see what happens, it will probably crash though.

I have a Galaxy Book 2 that uses the Snapragon 850 CPU and the OS is Win10 ARM 2004. "This app doesn't work on your PC," says the runtime above. "To find a version for your computer, consult the software publisher. "

[T.Slappy]

From my point of view the Windows on ARM is that Windows emulates win32 applications (later also win64) which now works on ARM processors so there is no need to rewrite the applications.

Is that correct? The idea of Microsoft is to have a lot of wi apps runnning on Arm platform because there is only a few native Arm apps available to this day.

[ljhholer]

Originally Posted by T.Slappy

From my point of view the Windows on ARM is that Windows emulates win32 applications (later also win64) which now works on ARM processors so there is no need to rewrite the applications.

Is that correct? The idea of Microsoft is to have a lot of wi apps runnning on Arm platform because there is only a few native Arm apps available to this day.

The easy way is this. Microsoft offers x86 real-time conversion to ARM emulators, but this does not apply to all software, such as hardware drivers. This conversion can result in a significant performance loss, and the best way to do this is to recompile a native ARM version.
Currently, many appx in the Microsoft Store offer ARM programs, and some Win32 desktop programs also offer ARM versions, such as 7z, Visual Studio Code, Rufus.

https://sourceforge.net/p/sevenzip/d...ad/7d5b1e5b51/
https://code.visualstudio.com/?#alt-downloads
http://rufus.ie/downloads/

[Anders]

Originally Posted by ljhholer

I have a Galaxy Book 2 that uses the Snapragon 850 CPU and the OS is Win10 ARM 2004. "This app doesn't work on your PC," says the runtime above. "To find a version for your computer, consult the software publisher. "

If it never actually starts executing then there is something in the PE header Windows does not like or the fact that we remove the relocations.